Latest news with #Baku-based
Euronews
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Euronews
Azerbaijan jails Sputnik execs amid escalating tensions with Russia
The executive director and editor-in-chief of Russia's state-run news agency Sputnik in Azerbaijan have been sentenced to four months in prison on Tuesday, following a Baku police raid of the Russian state media affiliate the day before, in what appears to be a fast-moving escalation between the two countries. According to Azerbaijan's authorities, they have been found guilty of fraud, illegal entrepreneurship and legalisation of property obtained by criminal means, Baku-based international news channel AnewZ reported. Azeri APA agency reported earlier that two employees of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) were among seven people detained after the raid on the offices of Sputnik Azerbaijan, owned by Rossiya Segodnya, which is in turn owned and operated by the Russian government. Another Russian state-run media outlet, Ruptly, later reported that one of its editors had been detained after attempting to film the police action at the Sputnik offices in Baku. Azerbaijan's Interior Ministry published a video showing officers leading two men to police vans in handcuffs. The tensions between Azerbaijan and Russia escalated over the past few days following the detention of over 50 Azerbaijanis in Yekaterinburg in raids by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) last Friday. Two people — brothers Huseyn and Ziyaddin Safarov — died during the raids, and three others were seriously injured. Russia claimed that the arrests were part of a murder investigation from the early 2000s. Azerbaijan-based broadcaster AnewZ said the news of deadly raids sparked outrage and calls for justice amid what Azerbaijanis allege as abuse and ethnic profiling. Some detainees have alleged that confessions were obtained through force, threats, and coercion, including pressure on family members. Forensic experts have revealed that the Azerbaijani citizens killed during the Russian raids in Yekaterinburg died from blunt force trauma, not gunshot wounds, raising additional questions about the circumstances of the deaths. Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry condemned the operation as 'brutal and unjustified' and called on the Russian authorities to 'conduct an urgent investigation into the matter and bring the perpetrators of this unacceptable violence to justice as soon as possible,' according to AnewZ. In addition, Azerbaijan summoned Russia's envoy to Baku to protest against the deadly raids and also cancelled all cultural events planned by the Russian state and private institutions in protest against the raid on Russia's state-run Sputnik agency offices. "In response to targeted and extrajudicial killings and acts of violence against Azerbaijanis based on their ethnicity, dem onstratively perpetrated by Russian law enforcement agencies in the Yekaterinburg region of the Russian Federation – and considering the systematic nature of such incidents in recent times – all cultural events planned in Azerbaijan involving Russian state and private entities have been cancelled," Azerbaijan's ministry of Culture said in a statement. Russia's state-run agency in Azerbaijan In February, the Azerbaijani government shut down Russia's state-funded news agency, Sputnik, but it has continued to operate, albeit with reduced staff. Although the agency's accreditation was officially revoked in February, the Azerbaijan Interior Ministry stated that its data indicated Sputnik Azerbaijan allegedly continued its activities using illegal funding sources. The director of Sputnik's parent company Rossiya Segodnya, Dmitry Kiselev — one of the most prominent Russian propagandists, who regularly makes open calls to destroy Ukraine and attack Europe with Russian missiles — said Sputnik and Azerbaijani officials had been trying to find a temporary agreement allowing it to keep working in Baku. Sputnik, Ruptly, and other affiliates of Rossiya Segodnya are widely regarded as tools for spreading the Kremlin's propaganda outside of Russia. Kiselev expressed his disconnect over the Monday arrests on Telegram, calling it a 'deliberate step aimed at worsening relations between the countries'. Azerbaijan's parliament has pulled out of planned bilateral talks in Moscow amid the recent escalation and cancelled a visit by a Russian deputy prime minister. Russian authorities denounced the state-run Sputnik office raid and detention as "unfriendly acts by Baku and the illegal arrest of Russian journalists." In additional developments on Tuesday, Azerbaijan's Interior Ministry announced that it dismantled two criminal groups in Baku, detaining Russian nationals suspected of trafficking drugs from Iran and conducting cyber fraud operations. Relations between Moscow and Baku cooled after an Azerbaijani airliner crashed in Kazakhstan in December, killing 38 of 67 people aboard. As exclusively reported by Euronews, investigations into the incident revealed that the Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 was shot at by Russian air defence over Russia's Grozny and rendered uncontrollable by electronic warfare. Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev accused Russia of trying to "hush up" the incident for several days. Russian President Vladimir Putin apologised to Aliyev for what he called a "tragic incident" but stopped short of acknowledging responsibility. In May, Aliyev decided not to attend Russia's 80th Victory Day celebrations.
Voice of America
06-02-2025
- Politics
- Voice of America
Azerbaijan detains two more journalists as watchdogs denounce crackdown
Azerbaijani authorities detained two more journalists this week, bringing the number held in the past year to nearly two dozen. Police on Wednesday arrested Shamshad Agha, of the news website Argument, and Shahnaz Beylargizi of Toplum TV. A court in the capital, Baku, on Thursday ordered the journalists to be held in pretrial detention for two months and one day, and three months and 15 days respectively, according to their lawyers. The journalists are charged with smuggling — a charge used in several other cases since November 2023, as authorities detained at least 23 journalists. Many of those currently detained had worked for the independent outlets Abzas Media and Meydan TV. All the journalists being investigated since November 2023 have denied wrongdoing, and media watchdogs say they believe the cases are designed to silence media. The Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, said that Agha's arrest 'underscores a grim intent by Azerbaijani authorities to silence and further restrict the country's small and embattled independent media community.' 'Azerbaijan's government should immediately reverse its unprecedented media crackdown and release Agha along with all other unjustly jailed journalists,' said a statement from CPJ's Gulnoza Said. Bashir Suleymanli, who is head of the Baku-based legal assistance group known as the Institute of Civil Rights, believes that the arrests are an attempt by authorities to stifle free speech. 'It seems that the process will continue until the complete elimination of independent journalism in the country,' he told VOA. Lawmaker Bahruz Maharramov, however, says the arrests are not a press freedom issue. 'Law enforcement agencies have taken relevant measures based on facts and irrefutable evidence, the authenticity of which is beyond doubt,' he told VOA. 'Of course, since such media organizations are formed more as instruments of influence of the West, the legal and judicial measures taken against them are observed with inadequate reactions from the West.' Based in Azerbaijan, human rights activist Samir Kazimli says that independent media and news outlets critical of the government are undergoing a difficult period. "If this policy of repression does not stop, independent media in Azerbaijan may be completely destroyed,' he told VOA. Kazimli said that the international community, including rights groups, politicians and U.S. and European officials 'must take steps using urgent and effective mechanisms to stop the Azerbaijani authorities' attacks on civil society and independent media.' One of the journalists detained this week had recently spoken out about concerns for the future of independent media in Azerbaijan. "The lives of all independent journalists are in danger," Agha told VOA in January. The editor of Argument, a news website covering democracy, corruption and human rights, said he has been banned from leaving the country since July. The research organization Freedom House describes Azerbaijan as an 'authoritarian regime' and states that authorities have 'carried out an extensive crackdown on civil liberties in recent years.' Elshan Hasanov of the Political Prisoners Monitoring Center told VOA that the total number of detainees documented by the Azeri nonprofit is 331. Azerbaijani authorities reject criticism on detainees as biased. Parliamentarian Maharramov told VOA that media in the country are free and that conditions for providing everyone with information, including diversity of opinion and freedom of action in the media sector as a whole, are fully ensured. Azerbaijan is among the worst jailers of journalists in the world, according to data by the CPJ. The country ranks 164 out of 180 on the Press Freedom Index, where 1 shows the best environment for media. This story originated in VOA's Azeri Service.
